


A Thousand Words

by RecessiveJean



Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Gen, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-02
Updated: 2012-12-02
Packaged: 2017-11-20 03:18:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/580714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RecessiveJean/pseuds/RecessiveJean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It doesn’t happen the way Clint thought it might.</p><p>(when it does, he sees it could never have happened any other way)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thousand Words

It doesn’t happen the way Clint thought it might.

He never told anybody, but for years he’s wondered if it would happen, then how, and finally, mostly, just when.

They’re not fantasies per se, the ideas that flit through the back of his mind at the strangest times: he doesn’t stroke off to them or keep them tucked away as he would a real secret. They’re musings, and they just make enough sense that he figures one day, one of them will eventually come true.

_(the first time, none do)_

As it turns out, the first time isn’t even close to any of the things he’d expected. There’s no knock-down, drag-out fight culminating in angry kissing, fingers biting into flesh and a bruising, triumphant union against the wall. There’s no near-death experience on either side that forces them to remind each other what it means to be alive. There’s not even the threat of apocalypse in any guise to drive them into each other’s arms for what may well be their last night on earth.

It’s not like he was _completely_ wrong to think it would happen like that, since those—all of them—will happen later, and when they do happen that way, each encounter will only be what it ever is: something they both need at the time.

But the first time there’s no unusually brutal mission from which to recover. There’s no soul-searing comedown, and no formidable enemy to anticipate. It’s just them, their assignment completed, strolling down a sidestreet with a half-bottle of merlot Natasha had lifted from the table of a sidewalk cafe.

Then it’s them in a room whose window they climbed through because she’d bet him he couldn’t, knowing it would oblige him to prove he could.

He carries the bottle. She watches him climb, then follows him up the wall into a solid, settled building that has survived the rise and fall of more revolutions than both of them combined.

It’s not anything he’d expected it would be, but as soon as he sees the room, smells the age of it and feels the silent, all-seeing weight of the heavy black beams that span the ceiling, it makes sense.

It was never going to be anywhere else.

The sheets on the narrow bed are newly-laid, crisp and clean. Between the middle and end of their stolen bottle, Clint and Natasha change that.

Somewhere around his twelfth sip he sets the bottle aside and pulls her onto the mattress. She lets him, nipping the arm around her shoulders just hard enough to sting. He doesn’t pull his arm away, she doesn’t make him, and somehow that comprises their moment of understanding, the space of silence in which they agree that this will happen. His elbow rests above her collarbone for three full beats of her heart before she rolls onto him and forces his jacket down over his shoulders. For his reply he reaches for her waist and looses the buttons he finds there. The rest of their clothes don’t last many minutes more, and when they are done shedding fabric, their stomachs touch.

She’s warm and soft and pliant for him, and he wonders why he’s surprised. He’s seen her be all these things for so many men, but he’s never gone so far as to imagine the day when she might be those things with him. For all his speculation about what this might be like, he’s never pictured a day when she might _want_ to be these things for him.

He is not surprised that her eyes stay sharp and her expression alert throughout. He’d at least thought ahead enough to expect that.

_(it will be years before she can close her eyes when they do this, before she can trust him with anything more precious, more guarded, than just her life. The first time she closes her eyes will strike him through the gut, lightning from the earth, and he will not be able to finish)_

The sound she makes when he brings her over the edge is like nothing he’s heard before, a scream tangled up in a song that burns a mark inside him. Then she does the same for him, and his taut-muscled silence surprises her in kind.

“I thought you’d be louder,” she says when they’re done. She is lying across the bed, the sheet covering one hip, her attitude of leisurely repose as perfect a fiction as any cover she’s ever assumed.

“And I thought you’d be quieter.”

So they can still surprise each other. He thinks that’s not such a bad thing.

“We’ll take the sheets with us,” she decides, already thinking ahead. “Burn them. Ashes in the river. Yes?”

“Yes.”

He stands and crosses to the right of the window, out of sight of passersby, and watches the street.

Behind him, Natasha stirs. He checks the reflection in the antique bureau mirror and sees she's still in bed, draped in a once-clean sheet and propped up on one elbow. In the wavy glass her eyes meet his, and his stomach tightens. The mirror frames her perfectly, a vision of tossed-flame hair, alabaster skin and silver scarlines.

This is the image he wants to keep, but cannot afford to take.

So he bends to pull his phone from the pocket of the jacket she’d peeled from his body and thrown to the floor. Arm extended, he frames the skyline, hits the button and captures the memory of his craven sentimentality for as long as he will dare keep any proof of where they’ve been.

Of who and what they’ve been, together.

When she speaks, he hears gentle mockery in her query.

“Making a memory?”

“Mm.”

“It’s a risk.”

He smiles with half his mouth.

“So was this.”

She’s silent a moment, allowing him that truth. Then, with detached, professional interest:

“Do you regret it?”

He studies the picture, puts down the phone and looks out across the rooftops.

“Not yet.”

_(he never will)_

 

 

***

 

I know a man  
who photographed the view he saw  
from the window of the room where he made love  
and not the face of the woman he loved there.  
– Yehuda Amichai


End file.
